FORA.tv’s Top 10 Moments of 2015

Happy holidays, everyone! We’re celebrating the New Year by looking back and sharing some of our most popular moments from 2015: exoplanets and brass bands, film festivals and great debates.

10. Cindy Gallop: Get Uncomfortable

At this year’s 3% Conference, an event celebrating creative female talent and leadership, entrepreneur and activist Cindy Gallop gave the closing keynote “Microactions, Accelerants, RESULTS” on the future of advertising.

9. Protecting World Wonders

Historian William Dalrymple gave a lecture entitled Heavenly Paradise and Earthly Reconciliation: The Creation of the Mughal Gardens at Agra at the World Monuments Fund, highlighting the mystery and power of the Taj Mahal.

8. Hurricane Katrina: 10 Years Later

The Atlantic hosted New Orleans: Ten Years Later, a conference on resilience and struggle post-Hurricane Katrina. On a panel called “What Does New Orleans Now Know?” Bennie Pete, founder and bandleader of the Hot 8 Brass Band, shared some hard truths about inequality in the city.

7. What to Do About ISIS?

Intelligence Squared U.S. hosted Containment Is Not Enough: ISIS Must Be Defeated, a debate on terrorism and the Middle East. Foreign policy experts Anne-Marie Slaughter and Michele Flournoy disagreed over how best to dismantle new threats.

6. The Case for Hope

The Atlantic launched its first Race and Justice in America summit exploring mass incarceration, policing, and prison reform. Pastor Thabiti Anyabwile told National Book award winner Ta-Nehisi Coates that there was reason to be optimistic.

5. Fact, Fiction, and Medicine

Open Society Foundations and The British Medical Journal examined ethics, storytelling, and new cures at Medical Investigative Journalism: Staying on the Cutting Edge. Dr. Steven Woloshin from The Dartmouth Institute fact-checked the headlines and asked patients to be skeptical.

4. What is #MakeInIndia?

The Boeing Company and IIT Bombay hosted India’s Time to Fly, a premier summit on aerospace innovation. Boeing’s Chairman James McNerney looked at the the country’s “#MakeInIndia” campaign and laid out his predictions for the future of manufacturing.

2. Earth 2.0

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the first discovery of exoplanets, the Carnegie Institution for Science hosted Hunting Planets with noted astronomers and astrophysicists. Could there be alien life out there in space? Scientists Alan Boss and Natalie Batalha explain what to look for.

1. The Birds and the Bees

The 58th San Francisco International Film Festival was a smash hit with red carpet interviews, on-stage Q&As, and more. Filmmaker and actress Isabella Rossellini talked about her new project “Green Porno”, an exploration of sex, biology, and love.